This new variety of lily plant originated as a seedling selected from a group of seedlings planted by me at Sandy, Oreg., with seeds resulting from my crossing of a very short, cream-flowered clonal selection from the `Pastel Hybrids` strain with pollen from a red-orange flowered seedling from `Connecticut Lemonglow` by `Red Carpet`, with the object of producing lilies in shades of orange and red well suited to forcing for pot plant production out-of-season. This particular seedling was selected for propagation and test because of the large size of its flowers having broad tepals, a vivid red coloration, and extremely inconspicuous spotting, this color pattern being unique in this type of lily. Asexual propagation of this seedling was done by me and under my direction at Sandy, Oreg., and carried on through several successive generations by bulb scale propagation and by natural propagation of bulblets, which demonstrated that the novel and distinctive characteristics of the selected seedling are fixed and hold true under asexual propagation from generation to generation.
Work with this new plant shows that the variety remains short and is not overly susceptible to bud abortion when forced into flower out-of-season as a pot plant. In addition, the clone possesses to a high degree the desirable characteristics of hybrid vigor, great hardiness, and disease resistance, as well as having all of the desired characteristics of excellence of form, color and habit.
The plant has shown that it is well suited to forcing out-of-season when the bulbs are dug at the appropriate time and properly precooled. For example, October-dug bulbs, properly precooled and potted in January, will flower under glass in western Oregon in an average of sixty-five to eighty days with no supplementary lighting and at moderate greenhouse temperatures.